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A Homage That Names No One

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A Homage That Names No One

The central formula of Jainism is remarkable for what it withholds: it names no god, no founder, no individual at all.

It offers homage to five categories, the arihants, those who have conquered the passions and teach; the siddhas, the liberated; the acharyas, heads of orders; the upadhyayas, teachers; and all sadhus, ascetics, everywhere. The last clause is the striking one. It salutes every ascetic in the world without restriction of sect, which means that as recited it includes ascetics of other Jain lineages and, on some readings, of other traditions entirely.

This is consistent with the doctrine behind it. Jainism has no creator god, and the liberated souls it venerates neither intervene nor respond. Homage to them is not petition; it is orientation. The formula's closing verses, which are added in recitation, say explicitly that this homage destroys all sin and is the foremost of auspicious things, and the mechanism intended is the effect on the reciter.

It is one of the very few things both major Jain communities, Digambara and Svetambara, hold in common without variation, which given the depth of their disagreements, about whether ascetics may wear clothes, whether women can attain liberation, and which texts are canonical, is worth noting.

The language is Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, not Sanskrit: a vernacular of the region, and the choice of it reflects the tradition's early commitment to teaching in the language people spoke.

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